Sympathy for Severus and Sirius...

[bookraptor11]

No: HPFGUIDX 68551

from a Snape supporter.  That's enough alliteration.  I promise.

Like many on the list, including a few who don't like him, I felt bad 
for Snape during the pensieve scene.  I do agree that this is only 
one incident, we don't know who started it back in their first year, 
or see other instances where Snape had the upper hand.  That's why I 
think the other glimpses we get of Snape's past are much more 
significant, for two reasons.

First, I think people who are bullied or abused at home are more 
likely to attract bullying from other children (that hunched over 
spiderlike twitching, just waiting for a blow to fall). Children can 
pick up on someone who doesn't have any feelings of self worth.  

Secondly, Snape came to Hogwarts with probably little knowledge of 
how to deal with other people except what he learned from his father. 
Even if he tried to behave differently, there would have been times, 
especially when he was being bullied, where his father's voice would 
have come out of him. Maybe calling Lily a mudblood when she tried to 
help him?

That said, I've never been a big Black fan, but I was thinking it 
over today, and if Snape deserves some understanding, so does Black. 
This is not to excuse them, or absolve them of responsibility for 
their actions as adults.

I don't mean Sirius was bullied as a child, in fact I think it's 
quite the opposite.  I would love to know when and where his contempt 
of his parent's viewpoint started, but now that he's dead we may 
never find out.  Did he go along or actively agree with them when he 
was younger?  Was it only when he was sorted into Gryffindor and 
Mommy Dearest hit the roof about him associating with mudbloods and 
blood traiters?  Until he finally spoke up at home disagreeing with 
them, I have a feeling he was treated like a little prince, the 
latest in a line of superior Blacks.

What I see as similar to Snape after he turned spy, when Black joined 
the good side he still had only his background to draw upon for the 
way he behaved. He was a Gryffindor still behaving like a Slytherin 
and a purist. In the pensieve scene, it's James who's doing most of 
the action, but I feel that he was showing off for Sirius as well as 
the girls. JKR says Harry feels that Sirius was the only one James 
would have stopped showing off for when he put the snitch away.

Maybe a lot of Black's bullying towards Snape was because Snape 
reminded Black of where he came from; he was hitting out at his 
parents and people like them.

Donna